Day at the Creation Museum

Moishe ‘n’ me

The Creation Museum in Kentucky is really a marvelous testament to what money can buy. A temple of Mammon, if you will. Designers and craftspeople work for money, not ideology, and the money here paid for some good ones. It reminded me a lot of Las Vegas that way.

You won’t learn much about the Bible here, since creationists really pick and choose. From an Old Testament perspective the whole place is outrageously idolatrous, violating the Second Commandment: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness [of any thing] that [is] in heaven above, or that [is] in the earth beneath, or that [is] in the water under the earth…” —Exodus 20:4-6 (KJV)

Finally, the Creation Museum is a magnificent monument to the limits of human psychology. Here it’s especially easy to see the extraordinary lengths humans go to to make some kind of PALATABLE sense of the world. I vastly prefer science to biblical authority, but even the best method of inquiry gets mashed through our squishy, emotional, fallible, fragile human minds. It’s easy to make fun of creationists, but we all have similar longings to understand the world, and there’s only so much cognitive discomfort we can handle before we just project on reality as we see fit.

Big ol’ bible dinosaur at the entrance

The Bible is authoritative, without error, and inspired by God. UNLIKE YOUR SILLY “SCIENCE” NONSENSE!

Human skeletons read the bible, unlike ape skeletons.

BEST BOOK EVAR!!!

Who you gonna listen to? Man? Or GOD???

Another bible dinosaur.

This certainly looks science-y.

Science is arbitrary, unlike the BIBLE.

And the little children (tweens) (mannekins) shall lead me.

Kickin’ it old skool.

Sin is very “urban.”

“The lord cheated?” Font failure.

The Chemistry section. Chemistry is one science creationists have no problem with.

Heretic in the garden of eden.

The garden of eden was home to penguins…

…and of course dinosaurs.

Adam and Eve overlooked by a dinosaur in the garden of eden.

God’s curse was NOT meant to be! Even though it was issued by God. God does some things that aren’t meant to be I guess.

Deanna pets the raptor.

By this time we were all suffering from Cosmic Pain.

Cosmic butthurt.

I don’t mind the incest rationalization as much as I mind the assertion that biblical marriage is “one man for one woman.” That’s contradicted all over the bible, even the old testament, even genesis. If you’re going to claim the bible is your authority, then heed the damn bible.

Ark diorama.

Cute lil’ dinos on the ark

The more you read this, the less sense it makes.

Fake Assyria was cool! Very Las Vegas. Pay craftspeople and designers and they’ll make anything for anyone.

Like the rest of the Creation Museum, this quilt was good looking and well made. That the content is batshit makes you appreciate the craftsmanship all the more.

Whatever.

Heretic group photo.

Here we are cleansing the taste of the Creation Museum from our mouths with Etheopian food in Indianapolis. Afterwards, some of us made the obligatory trip to Trader Joe’s before heading back to Champaign-Urbana. A day well spent!

I didn’t know creationists theme parks existed, so you took me by surprise!

What a double helix roller coaster ride through the wormholes of the religious propaganda!
By the time I got to the little dinos in their own Velociraptor corner of the Ark I was almost in tears.

But seeing the lovely explanation how our pouched furries ran and hopped faster than all the heavily pregnant placentals was soooooo vivid.

I imagine it like this:

Noah fired the pistol for the start of the race and the goal was the edge of the world.

Koalas, Echidnas, Wombats, Possums, Kangaroos, Wallabies, Quokkas and all the other Marsupials which no one outside of Oz has ever heard of dash at the speed of light. So do lots of snails, frogs, lizards and insects.

Placental mammals are just too slow and heavy, some being pregnant, others having to stop and care for their young. By the time Australia separated from the mainland only the Dingo made it across.

The champion of them all is the Tassie Devil – the pair outruns everyone – tornado style – and reaches Tasmania before it drifts away.
‘Museum’ must use some Looney Tunes footage as a proof!

I’m surprised there was no banana tasting room.
I have heard that the banana is the ultimate illustration of intelligent design. It just fits perfectly in your hand and has a neat little handle to peel open.

A thousand smiles from sunny Hobart, home of the Devil, edge of the world.
Your atheist vegetarian friend
NT

“the whole place is outrageously idolatrous, violating the Third Commandment”

But then almost every museum is idolatrous!

You also mention that creationists don’t have a problem with chemistry. So I guess they accept carbon dating for Dead Sea scrolls, but what about carbon dating for dinosaurs? If they’re supposed to be only a few thousand years old, then carbon dating must be off by several orders of magnitude.